Time and How to Spend It by James Wallman

Author:James Wallman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780753552667
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

Think back for a moment to the arc the hero goes through in the hero’s journey, and compare it with the arc a person goes through in Benson’s four stages of flow – and you’ll see some surprising similarities.

At the beginning of the hero’s journey, right after the hero has crossed the threshold, she or he goes through difficult tests on the road of trials, having to overcome obstacles and enemies, create allies, and learn difficult skills. That sounds like a lot of hard work, struggle even. And now here’s Benson saying that struggle is the essential launch pad for a peak experience.

Next, on the hero’s journey, at the end of the road of trials and at the top of the arc, the hero has the supreme ordeal. She or he enters the innermost cave, slays the dragon, and gets the reward; and so, in some sense, is released from the burden of the quest – because it has been achieved. In any hero story, there’s a pause here. After the storm of struggles on the road of trials building up to this final, huge, whacking great thunder crack, there’s a moment of calm. Indiana Jones has the treasure. Bilbo has hold of the ring. Moana has the heart of Te Fiti. Look at this phase alongside Benson’s model and it sounds, to me at least, a lot like a moment of release and its reward, flow.

Then, in the final stage of the hero’s journey, the hero makes the return, coming home, re-integrating what she or he has learned, sharing this new-found reward with the world. Because of his or her heroics, everyone can rest easy, sleep well and live happily ever after. Now, if that doesn’t sound like a chance for recovery, I don’t know what does.

What’s really interesting here isn’t just the similarities between these two roadmaps for happiness – the ancient wisdom of the hero’s journey and the twenty-first-century neuroscience. What’s really interesting, not only for anyone aiming to be superwoman or superman, but for every one of us who likes the idea of getting more happiness and creativity into our lives, is that there’s a clear process for triggering flow: road of trials/struggle, reward/release and flow, and return/recovery.

I find making these kinds of connections exciting. But there’s a problem that’s nagging me here too. Maybe it’s occurred to you as well. If you think about flow as Csikszentmihalyi, Kotler and Benson describe it, where people get so engrossed in rock-climbing or dancing or making love or reading that they lose track of time and even themselves – it sounds a lot like the way addicts talk about playing gambling machines and how it feels when you fall into the endless scroll of social-media sites like Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook.

That strikes me as deeply worrying.

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